Gamesys loading

[66663bef68269Yankee Clipper]

I am finding that ShockEd ignores the "Set Custom GameSys" command, or perhaps I am misunderstanding how it is supposed to work. If I open a level in ShockED and then try to look at what is going on in the Object Hierarchy Editor, it will show me whatever gamesys is currently active in Blue MOd Manager. Trying to change which gamesys is being used through the Set Custom GameSys command has no effect. So, if I want to look at vanilla, I have to run Blue Mod, disable any mods with a gamesys, and then use ShockEd. Or, if I want to look at the one with SCP, I have to run Blue Mod, activate SCP, and then I can look at the SCP gamesys. I'm guessing ShockEd is looking at the same configuration file that Blue Mod uses to determine which gamesys to show me. There must be a better way to get ShockEd to look at the gamesys I tell it to look at.

[66663bef684a0voodoo47]

Shocked is looking at cam_mod.ini, the very file BMM modifies to load mods. never tried to create a custom gamesys so I can't really comment at that one, but I think that if you save gamesys and choose a different name than default, it should be saved and the map should remember to load the new file. I think.

[66663bef685ecYankee Clipper]

I just want to be able to work on a level/gamesys in ShockEd without wondering what state the mods are in. If I load a level from the data directory, but ShockEd is pairing that with the gamesys from SCP, that can be confusing. I figured if I told it to use a custom gamesys (actually, the vanilla gamesys from the very same data directory, it should use that gamesys. But, it won't; it will hang onto that SCP gamesys, without even giving you any indication that is what it is doing. You might very well think you are in vanilla when the whole time you have a vanilla level with the SCP gamesys.

[66663bef68785Kolya]

I vaguely remember Zygo mentioning that you should always start your shocked session by loading an original mission.
If that doesn't work I would suggest to simply create a separate game folder for your shocked work.

[66663bef68883voodoo47]

yeah, creating a separate SS2 install without any mods is probably the easiest way. I personally have 5 SS2 installs I use for different things (Shockeding, mod testing, playing the game, playing FMs, and SS2Tool testing).

[66663bef68c2bZygo]

I vaguely remember Zygo mentioning that you should always start your shocked session by loading an original mission.

It doesn't have to be an OM, a Fan Mission should work as well. That suggestion is to do with gamesys editing where not having a mission (of either type) loaded can lead to bad things, primarily the sound schema breaking and there being no in game sounds. I don't think it would cause the issue here though.

I don't use the mod manager so can't comment on how things work there as I use fmsel instead, but what should happen if you want to use a custom gamesys is to save the gamesys under a new name then use the Set_gamesys gamesysname.gam command in the shocked console window, the gamesys name in the bottom of the ShockEd window should change. After saving the mission the gamesys should load automatically next time the mission is loaded. But, the possible issue here is that the scp gamesys is named shock2.gam as is the default SS2 gamesys. It may well look for the first 'shock2.gam' it can find and load that. If you aren't short on disk space creating a new install would be best to solve that problem, in fmsel it's pretty easy to set up new/ not use FMs as wanted but I know nothing about how the BMM handles it.

[66663bef68d46Kolya]

BMM adds mods to the mod_path variable in cam_mod.ini. So it's pretty easy to unload them as well but I understand that OP wants a way not having to remember that, so a separate install is the best solution.

[66663bef68e72Yankee Clipper]

OP is of the opinion that it would be better if ShockED allowed the user to specify what level and gamesys was being worked on from within the program. Like when you tell it to load a file, you should also be able to specify what gamesys goes with the file. Or even, that ShockEd would use the gamesys that is sitting in the very same directory as the level file. Or even that it tell you that it is in fact using some other gamesys that resides in a mod directory instead of the standard file. I know - asking a lot.

[66663bef68fc4Kolya]

That's simply not how it works and we can't change that. What I can do is give you this batch file plus an almost empty cam_mod.ini.
Extract to your game dir. Now if you want to run shocked, start shocked.bat. It will backup cam_mod.ini and copy the empty file in its place. So no gamesys from any mods will be loaded.
When you're finished modding, run shocked.bat again and it will restore cam_mod.ini from the backup thereby also restoring your mod setup.
[shockedBat.7z expired]

[66663bef6913cYankee Clipper]

Kolya, I appreciate the effort, but it is unnecessary. Now that I know what it is doing, I can make adjustments myself. Perhaps I missed it in the documentation, but I don't recall seeing it anywhere that this is how it operates. It never even occurred to me that when I loaded a vanilla level and then looked at items in the object hierarchy, that I was being shown stuff from SCP just because I had the SCP mod active the last time I played. There is nothing inside the program that would tip anyone off to this behavior. It also seems odd to me that ShockEd lacks the ability to overcome this behavior from within the software.

I was under the impression that NV was involved in the implementation of this tool from DromEd, but since I have never even seen DromEd, I have no clue as to how what exactly that means, or how configurable the interface is. It seems like it could be possible for the software to give some kind of indication when it is using a mod gamesys for example, but then it is always easy to suppose things could be done.